On illusions of the senses / By Robert Paterson, M.D.

  • Paterson, Robert, 1814-1889.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On illusions of the senses / By Robert Paterson, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    remove the body through the door of the house, and to convey it through the window was impossible without removing part of the wall. Some hints were dropped that the room liad been subsequently haunted by the poor man's spirit. This gentleman laid his arms properly prepared against intrusion of any kind by the bedside,' and retired to rest, not without some degree of appre- hension. He was visited in a dream by a frightful apparition, and awaking in agony, found himself sitting up in bed with a pistol grasped in his right hand. On casting a fearful glance round the room, he discovered, by the moonlight, a corpse dressed in a shroud reared erect against the wall, close by the window. He summoned resolution to approach the dismal object, passed one hand over it and felt nothing, and at length discovered that the object of his terror was produced by the moonbeams forming a long bright image through the broken window, on which his fancy, impressed by his dream, had pictured with mischievous accuracy the linea- ments of a body prepared for interment. An anecdote related by Dr Abercrombie ^ also illustrates this point. It occurred to an eminent medical friend, who had sat up late one evening in considerable anxiety about one of his children who was ill. He afterwards fell asleep in his chair, and had a frightful dream, in which the prominent figure was an immense baboon. He awoke with the fright, got up instantly, and walked to a table which was in the middle of the room* He was then quite awake; but close by the wall in the end of the apartment he saw the baboon, making the same grimaces which he had seen in his dream; it continued visible about half a minute and disappeared. Again, Dr Abercrombie relates that two esteemed friends of his, while travelling in the Highlands, had occasion to sleep in separate beds in one apartment. One of them having awoke in the night, saw by the moonlight a skeleton hanging from the head of his friend's bed. He instantly got up to investigate the source of the illusion, and found it to be produced by the moonbeams falling upon the drapery of the bed, which had been thrown back in some unusual manner on account of the heat of the weather. He re- turned to bed, and soon fell asleep; but having awoke again some time after, the skeleton was still so distinctly before him that he could not sleep without again getting up to trace the origin of the phantom. Determined not to be disturbed a third time, he brought down the curtain into its usual state, and the skeleton appeared no more. III. Hallucinations of the Senses Naturally divide themselves—1st, Into the mental, or those originating in the brain, and referred to the organs of sense; 2d, To those which have reference to the eye itself, and have their origin in its structures ; 3d, To those which arise from the imi^ression of outward objects on the sensesj under certain states of mental excitement. ^ On the Intellectual Powers, p. 367.